The present invention relates to the art field of gymnasium equipment, and in particular to a piece of exercise apparatus for use as a training aid in sports such as martial arts.
In training sessions for combat sports generally, it is the practice to utilize targets consisting in an element designed to receive blows struck by the athlete with the upper limbs, and on occasion with the lower limbs also.
One such apparatus employed for this purpose is the classic punching ball, that is, a ball of leather or rubber suspended between two vertically disposed elastic ropes, or hung from an overhead support by means of an articulated fitting. In certain cases, the punching ball is fitted to a support consisting in a substantially rigid rod secured to the floor, anchored at the bottom end with a flexible coupling and maintained thus in a vertical at-rest position.
The target is not capable of spontaneous movement in any of the arrangements mentioned thus far its displacement resulting in practice exclusively from the elastic reaction of the supporting components to the blows delivered by the athlete.
This dictates a certain predictability in the way that the target responds, with the result that the exercise regime tends to become repetitive, and the athlete tends to find him/herself interacting with an apparatus liable to counter in the same manner every time, without guaranteeing that variety of situations which rather will occur in competition, and must therefore be necessary to a comprehensive training program.
The object of the present invention is to provide an exercise apparatus comprising a target capable of spontaneous and substantially unpredictable movement in response to any given movement of the user.